War Pictures Cause Yellowtimes.Org To Be Shut Down

War Pictures Cause Yellowtimes.Org To Be Shut
Down, Again

Somebody doesn't like hearing the
truth. Okay, for a second, lets scratch that and choose a
slightly less politically charged term. Someone doesn't
like to be disputed with alternative views, counterclaims,
research and fact. Someone wants you, the reading public,
to only gather one-sided, monotone, Orwellian dispatch.
News the way they "fashion" it. Or as CNN will have you
believe, the "most reliable source for news."

And so, once
again, the staff at
YellowTimes.org was threatened with a shutdown:

"We
are sorry to notify you of suspending your account: Your
account has been suspended because [of] inappropriate
graphic material."

Within hours, the site was shut
down.

What's next? Martial law?

An e-mail hours later
was more explanatory: "As 'NO' TV station in the US is
allowing any dead US solders or POWs to be displyed (sic)
and we will not ether (sic)." Of course, at the time of
this e-mail, TV stations across the U.S. were allowing the
images of U.S. POWs to be brought to the public's
attention.

These are most certainly difficult, perilous,
and often confusing times. The world has been torn asunder
by first the prospect of war, and now by the images of war
fed live into our living rooms.

Today, Iraqi TV and
Al-Jazeera, followed by Spanish National TV, Portugal's
networks, and most European TV stations, aired footage of
U.S. Marine fatalities in the southern town of Nasiriyah. A
handful of terrified U.S. POWs were also shown. According
to the Associated Press: "Anecita Hudson of Alamogordo said
she saw her 23-year-old son, Army Spc. Joseph Hudson, who
was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, interviewed in the Iraqi
video, which was carried on a Filipino television station
she subscribes to."

There was public outrage in the U.S.,
citing the Geneva Convention on treatment of Prisoners of
War, which forbids the broadcast of any footage or graphic
depiction of POWs. True, the Geneva Convention does indeed
include that provision.

However, the outrage follows on
the heels of extensive, and I repeat, extensive footage of
Iraqi POWs, sometimes with cameras panning in for extreme
close-ups of blank-staring Iraqi soldiers, dishevelled and
fatigued as they were.

CNN grilled an Al-Jazeera
spokesperson on the (de)merits of airing such footage
today. When asked by the Al-Jazeera spokesperson why it was
allowed for U.S. stations to broadcast footage of Iraqi
POWs, CNN's Aaron Brown said, "because their families
wouldn't be watching".

Not true. CNN is broadcast around
the world and is available to Iraqis. There are millions of
Iraqis living outside Iraq who may recognize an Iraqi POW
as a family member.

Not withstanding, to say "their
families wouldn't be watching" is not an excuse. If it is a
violation on the Iraqi side, then surely, it is as well on
the U.S. side.

(Monday's front page of the Washington Post
has a picture of an Iraqi POW being handled by U.S.
troops.)

CNN, however, is accused of not airing any
footage of Iraqi dead or Iraqi civilian casualties,
although this is a necessary image of war. War is horrific
and to portray it otherwise speaks of corporate
agenda.

Nevertheless, I was tongue-tied at the MSNBC
broadcast of a mother of one of the U.S. POWs as she shed
tears for her son. It gripped me and moved me and I wanted
to cry with her. I also wanted to cry for the parents of the
Iraqi civilian child, the top part of his skull torn off;
an innocent child caught in a war he did not
understand.

So, here we have it, war affects us all. It
affects Americans and Iraqis, as well as the rest of the
world.

Here, at YellowTimes.org, we did not want
these stories to go untold. We wanted to bring the horrors
of war inflicted on all sides. We condemn killing, we
condemn war, and we certainly condemn persecution and
torture.

We also condemn the intentional absence of
truth.

However, there are some who would prefer we did not
publish and inform the public.

Consequently, as of this
afternoon, March 24, 2003, we were shut down.

I do beg
your pardon, no, we weren't shut down -- we were censored --
pure and simple.

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